It always turns eyes when someone turns out at a Banger race meeting in a
funeral coach!

The hearseis
regarded as something a bit out of the ordinary in the Banger racing world and are
invariably saved to race in special events as most of the examples shown on this section
of rolling START! illustrate. Once the green flag goes down the
hearse(s) in any race tend to attract a lot of attention from their competitors and
usually, it has to be said. don't last very long! Whatever the outcome it's a fine
way for a funeral coach to end its days!

I
was inspired to rebuild and extend this section of rolling START! after visiting GRIM RIDES which is a
superb US-based site. I recommend that you pay a visit to that site as well as some
of the other sites you can find linked from there. Please also take the time to read
the acknowledgements at the bottom of this page for the great spooky graphics and effects
that I have used!

As Limos and hearses go
together rather well don't forget to check out the Limo Galleries
and, of course, the rest of rolling START!

Contributions for
further updates to this section would be gratefully received.

While the racing of heases is reasonably
commonplace on the UK's Banger Tracks a race winning hearse is something else!

The following video clip shows Dean Steele's
Daimler DS420 Hearse being spun out just having won a race at Hednesford's Pre-68 Classic
Banger Day on 7 October 2001. AWESOME!

Pre-68 - Hednesford 7-10-01 -
click thumbnail for video clip

The chances are that many visitors to this
page have an interest in Classic Cars. These too are highly rated as
"material" in the world of Banger racing. The following galleries show the
cars that were raced - including ten hearses - at the 2001 Pre-68 Classic Banger Day at
Hednesford Raceway

If you would like to witness Hearses racing
for real the two best chances of doing so are the annual Classic Banger Day at Hednesford
which is held in early October (for details visit the INCARACEwebsite) or the Annual
FIRECRACKER which is held at Arena Essex to the north-east of London, on the first Sunday
in November.

Banger racing is a unique and very popular
form of racing on many UK and some European short ovals. Whenever anyone
experiences a Banger race for the first time the whole affair really seems quite
unbelievable and very difficult to fathom out! This is essentially because the
participants fall into two distinct categories. First there are the racers, the guys
(& gals) who race to win, or at least they start the race with the object of
winning! The second type of driver is the wrecker, i.e. he who has no intention of
winning but every intention of causing as much havoc as possible. It is all very
unpredictable - and highly entertaining - because any particular driver may start
some races as a wrecker and others as a racer! The effect is that some Banger races
can turn out very much as - races - with others becoming wrecking frenzies.

Can
you add to this collection? Do you know any good stories about racing with hearses?